


Beautiful World

by astrangerenters



Category: Final Fantasy VIII
Genre: Angst, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Magic, Mother-Daughter Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-05
Updated: 2013-05-05
Packaged: 2017-12-10 10:59:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,485
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/785297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astrangerenters/pseuds/astrangerenters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rinoa can understand why Squall, Selphie, and the others care so much for Edea Kramer. Rinoa's only just come into her powers, but Edea was a child when hers came. She grew up with that pain, the feelings Rinoa is now struggling with. It's made her a better person, a stronger person. Rinoa can only strive to do the same.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beautiful World

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jessicamariek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jessicamariek/gifts).



> Request:  
> Edea and Rinoa, bonding and sorceress meta. Post-game, they're in very similar situations - a former sorceress and a fledgling one, both on the outskirts of SeeD, which happens to be an organization dedicated to fighting sorceresses. Ideas: Edea feels guilty for Rinoa 'inheriting' her power, even though it's not really her fault; seeing each other's dreams/knowing where the other is/any other paranormal connection; their respective knights and the differences between them; finding non-destructive uses for the magic. I do like Squall/Rinoa, so if you don't write them together please at least have them be on good terms.
> 
>  
> 
> Hi there, jessicamariek - I hope there's not too much angst going on. I was really excited to explore a friendship/bond between Rinoa and Edea, so thank you for this prompt!

Sometimes the world grows too loud.

It's frustrating, Rinoa thinks, because a bit of noise has never bothered her before. She remembers eagerly slipping past her father's gates to meet boys in the Deling City arcades full of dance music and the sounds of a hundred different games. The clickety-clack of one train after another roaring through Timber. Even Angelo's howls of frustration when a cat's just out of her reach.

She hears more now, so much more than she wants to. So much more than she knows how to handle. It comes and goes, and when it comes she can hardly breathe until it goes. And it's difficult to explain.

Sometimes it's as simple as a carpenter with a hammer, pounding nails into wood. Only the carpenter's on the other side of town. Sometimes it's the turning of book pages in the Garden library, the rustle of paper more like a clap of thunder. And sometimes it comes in the night when she's in Squall's room, her ear to his chest. Listening to his heartbeat changes from something that gives her peace, gives her reassurance, into a harsh thumping. A pounding, aching sound that she fears may unravel her. 

Because if she allows herself to listen close, to deal with the noise, she allows herself to wonder how quiet it may be if the thumping ever stops.

It isn't something Squall can fix, and it irritates him. Sends him to the training center with a death wish, as though charging at a T-Rexaur will make him strong enough to defeat whatever's troubling her. 

"But they're only sounds," she tells him, wishing she could explain it better. Wishing he'll stop panicking. "Sounds just...cranked up at random."

And he knows when it happens. He's trained himself to sense a clenched fist, her teeth tearing into the softness of her lip. He can bring his hands to the side of her head, can clasp them over her ears, but it isn't something ear muffs or headphones can help. "Look at me," his lips always say, "Hyne, Rinoa, look at me. I'm here."

Falling into the deep blue forever that's promised in his eyes isn't enough - focusing on one sense doesn't cancel out another.

Rinoa has her knight, and he defends her with everything he is. But there are some things about her new life, her new self, that don't need defending. They simply need an off switch.

\- - -

He doesn't want to leave. That much is clear when Squall lingers in the orphanage's dining room, fidgeting with the napkin in his lap as his "Matron" clears away the plates. "She'll be quite alright here with me," Edea has said at least ten times in ten different ways throughout their lunch. "Garden needs you."

" _She_ needs me," Squall has replied in protest.

But finally between the two of them (Edea with a firm hand to Squall's shoulder, Rinoa with a pinch to his side where she knows it tickles the most) Squall returns to the Ragnarok and leaves her behind.

"Please help me to fix or at least train my brain," had been Rinoa's rather lame request for help. Her letter to Edea had been so garbled that Rinoa is surprised the older woman has welcomed her so warmly. Please let me hide-slash-camp-out-with-you-for-a-while because it turns out this whole sorceress deal isn't what I imagined it would be.

She can't fully explain what she hears to Squall, but to Edea she can. And to Edea she will.

\- - -

She wonders what it would be like to have memories of this place. Of the sea salt and faint fish smell that lingers at the shore, of the stone house with the ivy climbing with determination up its walls. After years of neglect, Edea and Cid have slowly begun transforming the place once more. Instead of ruins, the orphanage on the Centra coast has become a refuge again.

It's quiet here.

"But it wasn't always," Edea says, bringing a tray of tea over. It's been three days since Rinoa's sought solitude here, away from the cacophony of the cities, of Garden, of the heart beating inside the man she cares for.

"With the children?" Rinoa asks as they sit together outside, chairs facing the rainbow colors of the flower fields.

"With the children it was always so boisterous," Edea explains. "My greatest happiness. Skinned knees, patching up clothes..."

"But they've grown," Rinoa says with a smile. 

"They've grown," Edea acknowledges with a gentle grin. "But there's still antiseptic in the cupboard should any knees get scraped. That goes for you, too."

It's been three days, and though they both know why Rinoa is here, they have yet to broach the topic of Rinoa's troubles. Instead it has been more of a "get to know you" session. Cid appears at meals but spends much of his time with stacks of books, leaving the two women to get properly acquainted. "Girl talk," the pair of them have decided to call it.

They've walked the length of the beach several times, Edea's dark hair flying freely in the breeze. Beneath her feet Rinoa's felt the grains of sand, the cold ocean water, and the dirt of the fields. Together they've climbed the steps of the lighthouse and have looked out at the vastness of the sea, a reminder of how large the world Hyne created is. At night Rinoa's slept beneath the stars in Edea and Cid's backyard, and Edea has not left her side. Not once. She's woken to Edea's kind eyes, her thin fingers combing gently through her hair.

Rinoa can understand why Squall, Selphie, and the others care so much for Edea Kramer. There's grace in her movements, strength in her words, and kindness in her heart. Rinoa's only just come into her powers, but Edea was a child when hers came. She grew up with that pain, the feelings Rinoa is now struggling with. It's made her a better person, a stronger person. Rinoa can only strive to do the same.

Julia Heartilly left behind the ring Rinoa still keeps as well as her name. She left behind her voice, but only in a pop song. Untouchable, unreachable. Edea slides so simply, so easily into the empty space Julia's absence created in Rinoa's heart. The space for the mother Rinoa has needed for so long. Though they are sisters as Hyne's descendants, Rinoa prefers the new bond they are building independent of the magical gift and curse that connects them.

She opens up about the things she could only tell her mother's gravestone all these years. About her first crush, her first kiss. About her time with the Owls and how hard she fought for Timber. About Squall. And when her words run out, when her tongue feels heavy with so much talking, Edea holds out her hand and lets Rinoa squeeze for as long as she needs to.

\- - -

It is the fifth day when Rinoa hears more than she wants to again. That she's gone so many days without incident is a testament to the healing nature of the orphanage and Edea's calming presence. But it returns. This time it is as though she can hear the flowers in the fields singing, crying out to the sun for warmth. 

It leaves her breathless, her head pounding as she crouches down on the living room floor and nearly topples Cid's precarious stack of books. "What do I do?" she finally asks Edea when she can form words again. "What do I do? How can I make it stop?"

Edea's hand is firm on her back, rubbing in gentle circles. "Rinoa," she says. "Rinoa."

She focuses on the sound of her name falling so sweetly, so peacefully from Edea's lips. Though it takes a few moments, the flowers quiet down and the tension in her starts to seep away.

When she's back, when she's the Rinoa she knows again (Rinoa who just has sorceress powers, not _Rinoa the sorceress_ ), she isn't sure what to say. "So that," she murmurs, trying to focus on breathing, "that is my life lately. It's loud."

They don't leave the room. Instead Edea sits on the floor beside her, legs curled up beneath her. "Noise," Edea says. "So you have noise."

Rinoa blinks. "Am I sick? Out of balance? What's wrong with me?"

"Our senses are enhanced, and sometimes one becomes even more intense than the others," Edea explains. "I don't know all there is to know. Nobody has felt much need to write about it."

Rinoa knows this. She's spent hours in Balamb Garden's library, has downloaded dozens and dozens of books from Esthar's research facilities courtesy of Laguna. All books about sorceresses are fairy tales about wickedness and destruction or clinical tomes about how they can be subdued or defeated. Few have shown much interest in documenting the physical or psychological damage sorceress powers have on those who have them. Because after all, the books seem to assert, they are no longer people. They're a thing. Magic and the potential for evil in a human-looking package.

"With me it was touch," Edea says. "At times it was like I could feel molecules in the air crushing and pressing against my skin. It was claustrophobic. Touching someone else would be like a jolt of lightning. Even Cid, the touch of his hands on me...I'd scream "get away!" and break his heart over and over again. I hid in the dark often, but I could still feel it. I couldn't turn it off. And then suddenly things would go back to normal."

Rinoa is not alone in this, though it doesn't much cheer her. For generations, people have feared what a sorceress' magic could do to them. But nobody's asked what a sorceress' magic could do to _herself_.

"I have a guess," Edea explains, "now that I know what is hurting you."

"I'm all ears." Rinoa winces. "Bad choice of words."

"I received my powers when I was very young," Edea says. "And the sorceress they came from was merely an old woman in town. Nobody paid her much attention. I know now that she had no knight, no gentle hand to guide her. Nobody to touch her and say that yes, it's hard, but it will be alright. Perhaps that's why it threw me off balance in that way when I received her powers. She'd rarely been touched."

Rinoa doesn't want to say it. But she must. "I have yours now. Yours and Ultimecia's and Adel's..."

Edea doesn't flinch at the reminder that she has no powers now because they all passed from her to Rinoa. She instead holds out her hand for Rinoa to take. "Adel was in that tomb for so long. Frozen in the silence and emptiness of space. She cried out for years, and nobody listened. Perhaps that is her unfortunate gift to you."

Rinoa shuts her eyes, remembering the red glow in Adel's. The fury, the hatred. The powers of generations of women flow in her veins now. Perhaps Adel's are just the noisiest.

"I want it to stop."

"I know."

"It scares Squall," she explains quietly. It scares her too, but that goes without saying. "He'd do anything. Fight for me, die for me. Those sacrifices, that willingness comes so easy to him. But in this he can't be a knight. He asks me what's wrong, and I don't know what to say. He can't defend me against my own mind..."

This is where, in a perfect world, Edea will smile and say "but of course there's a way. Of course we can fix this."

But despite the beautiful world Hyne has created, it is far from perfect.

"No," Edea says. "He cannot help you with this. And neither can I."

\- - -

One night when they think Rinoa is asleep, she can hear them. They're inside the house, and she's outside, but it doesn't matter. She can hear Edea crying, and it's a terrible sound. 

"I did this to her..."

It's not the woman Rinoa knows during the day, with the friendly smile and positive attitude.

"You had no choice." Cid, as calm as ever.

"I did this to her..."

She can't unhear this. It only serves as a reminder that one day Rinoa must pass on her powers too. The cycle will continue, neverending. Another girl's life will change forever. And Rinoa will blame herself as Edea blames herself. The magic makes Rinoa strong. The magic makes Rinoa weak.

\- - -

There is no solution. No quick fix that will stop these momentary imbalances. But, Rinoa learns, Edea lived most of her life with them. It was a part of her, as it is a part of the gift Rinoa now bears.

Acknowledging it, she discovers, is all she can do. These sensations, these experiences, will continue. But, Edea explains, you live with it. 

Wanting it to stop, expending negative energy in hopes of stopping it only makes it worse. "Just let it happen, get through it and the next time will come easier," Edea tells her. "And the next time after that. And the next and the next. Don't fear it. Accept it."

When the sound of gulls in the air drops her to the ground, Rinoa breathes in and out. "Don't fear it," she says aloud. "Accept it. Don't fear it. Accept it."

The noise continues.

"Don't fear it. Accept it."

The noise lessens. 

The following day, she can hear the worms in the soil. She can hear the waves crashing to shore. She thinks she can hear boats puttering around in Dollet Harbor on the other side of the world.

And this time she's not afraid. 

\- - -

Squall looks tired when he arrives, but he seems to perk up as soon as he sees her again. He doesn't ask if she's cured or fixed.

He merely asks, "how are you?"

Edea squeezes her shoulder and heads to another room. A squeeze that means Rinoa has a refuge here whenever she needs it. A home. And even a mother, if that is what she needs even more.

She meets Squall's eyes. Her sight is normal, and she is grateful to be able to see him. Her sense of smell is normal, and she detects the familiar scent of his soap that can lull her into pleasant dreams. She can't imagine not being able to or not wanting to touch him. She can't imagine not being able to or not wanting to taste him, put her warm mouth against his skin. She'll listen to anything and everything if it means she can still hear his voice.

"How are you?" he asks again, but this time only with his eyes.

"I'm alright," she tells him and means it.

Sometimes the world grows too loud, but it's a world Rinoa must live in. So she won't fear it. She'll simply accept it.


End file.
